Here are my reactions to the final three stories in the anthology Robert Silverberg Presents The Great SF Stories (1964). Of them, the second below was by far my favorite and, hey, turns out it's written by the guy who presented the book! Starting next week I'll be switching to a different sci-fi short stories year's best anthology series that covers the years 1965-89...I'll deal with 1990-onward when I get there...
THE LIFE HATER by Fred Saberhagen
Back on September 2nd I reviewed the 1963 Saberhagen short story Fortress Ship, which dealt with a fleet of automated warships from an unknown, probably extinct alien civilization from eons before that humans must combat to save their own planets and even Earth. This particular story is another one with this theme as Carr, solo piloting his own ship and painfully suffering from terminal cancer, encounters one such ship and decides that dialogue with its AI controls is the only way to save himself. A clever story leading the reader in one direction, until the final conversation takes place...
NEIGHBOR by Robert Silverberg
On a distant sparsely-settled planet far off in the future with human life extended to hundreds of years, a domineering man living with his family on their great land holdings fumes with hatred at his neighbor whose ugly home base is visible from his window. The enmity between the two is mutual and has been going on for untold years and they have their own defenses, weapons and robot surrogates facing off against each other...only the planet's other residents have collectively kept open conflict from breaking out. One day the neighbor asks for a truce and a meeting between the two...and the real reason for the vehement hatred then makes itself known. A story with a clear allegorical meaning for us in the present real world on Earth...
FOUR BRANDS OF IMPOSSIBLE by Norman Kagan
Set a little into the future, a young mathematician/student continues his studies and discovers a movement to explore how to break through logical contradictions in that field. The story rambles a bit too much for me as the institute pushing Project Round Square has its ultimate goal: sensory enervation, the opposite of sensory deprivation and designed to inject massive computer-generated input into the minds of volunteers. The abject irrelevancy of huge sections of mathematics has always been a sticking point for me...this story goes into all that but I had a bit of trouble trying to make sense of both the protagonist and the author's trains of thought...I think the story was meant to be funny or satirical in some way...
Next I begin my look at science fiction short stories from the year 1965...
No comments:
Post a Comment